unhooked and in pieces

I should probably be getting my life together. It's been more than a month since my last official job. Although I don't think one can actually call it a job. It's more like an...experience, to put it mildly. Hmm, it's probably more like a slow burn meets action/drama/comedy movie playing in slow motion.

I guess that's part of the problem. This entire experience. This entire year that just passed. I'm not sure if it's too much, too soon, but I guess I just got tired. We all did, in that kind of work. I was so into it at first. Did my job with passion, with so much of my faith and trust. I trusted the people I worked with, trusted my boss and believed in the advocacies we were fighting for.

But, as with everything in politics, nothing is ever what it seems.

Now I didn't come into this blind or stupid. I knew there was something--many things--wrong in that cursed world. But I thought I could do something about it. Me, a 20-year-old fresh graduate. Such lofty ideas in my head. No, I wasn't blind. I was too ambitious for my own good.

At one point I learned that there are many ways of looking at our situation. Sir Alain once told us that, coming from the discipline of behavioral science, he sees it more as a case study. He used a scholarly eye, disinterested, detached. It was effective to an extent. It was a defense mechanism for when you didn't want to or couldn't move too much or couldn't do anything about the shit you find yourself in.

But that tactic, though useful, could only get you so far. And then you start to give in or give up.

I asked Wilford (an officemate and a good friend) once, last November when we were gearing up for the campaign, "Kakayanin ba ng sikmura mo?" He answered yes. I couldn't say the same for myself at that time. I had put in about five months' work into the office already when I asked that question, and yet I still asked.

Alas, kinaya ko. I promised myself, and made Wilford promise that by the end of the campaign, dapat buo pa ang pagkatao namin. That was all I wanted. I wanted to be whole. I wanted to come out of it still alive inside.

I learned a lot. Things I can't really express, can't tell anyone. I guess that's partly why I've been so quiet, why at one point I just abandoned blogging, why lately I've found it so hard to write or talk about things and thoughts and feelings. Even now I don't know if anyone can completely understand what I'm trying to say.

There are at least three reasons why I made it through. Wilford, Julie and Lloyd are those three reasons. We were the "youth team", thrown into the pit right out of college, so-called student leaders, and now strategists, spinners, executioners. We stood together, and fell as one. They will never probably never know the depth of my gratitude, but I will never forget them for the rest of my life. Ten, twenty years from now, we will look at each other and remember that one summer that shook us from our daydreams and changed the course of our lives.

Wilford is back in law school, away from politics and happier than ever. "Ayoko na dun, laglagan dun," he always says. Lloyd is a bum, a satisfied one, apparently. I reckon he will be a mayor someday (I'm sure he got great tips from the past campaign). Julie is in law school, too. Haven't heard from her in a while, but I'm sure she's fine. My brother who's her classmate said someone gave her a bunch of flowers in class recently. Ah, classic Julie.

We all got burned that summer, in varying degrees. We all put ourselves on the line, because we believed in something, or wanted to believe. More than that, we trusted the people who took us there. And we got burned. But we're better now because of it. Reputations stepped on, prejudices thrown our way, ridicule, disbelief, disappointment...these weren't the problems we faced, not really, even though a lot of people outside felt it was their obligation to weigh us down with all of that, like it's their right. But to us, those issues were ridiculously trivial. We knew better. It wasn't that.

The thing is, one cannot stand properly on shaky ground. Especially so if it is made out of lies and deceit. The soil cracks; the person gets disillusioned eventually. And it's not your average growing up my-professor-flunked-me-without-valid-reason-what-happened-to-due-process-and-academic-freedom kind of disillusion. Not even the I-thought-Communism-stood-for-something-great-why-did-they-allow-the-purge type. No, it was worse. I was disillusioned, every single fucking day, starting June 2003. It wasn't an electric shock treatment, not like having a gun to your head. It was more of a slow death. Torture. One minute you're gasping for air, the next it seems like you're being given a way out, a time to scream for help, a chance to walk out and leave. You want to. You think so. Or maybe not. Something pulls you back. Death becomes strangely attractive. You're caught in a spiral; you want out just as much as you want to hold on for dear life, even if it means holding on to death. You're hooked.

That was our battle. It was a battle of wits, of self-control. A war for inner peace in a time of tempest.

It's been more than a month. I've pulled the hooks out of my guts. But I can't walk straight just yet. There's a numbing pain that won't go away. I got out alive, I suppose, but as Wilford asked me shortly after his "role" in that summer experience was clearly defined by our immediate superior, "Pa'no pa ko magiging buo after this? Tangina."